Metrics for verifying application quality

Pega Platform maintains and enhances foundational development quality metrics to ensure that applications are built and maintained to the highest standards.  

Use the following metrics to monitor quality throughout the application lifecycle:

• Guardrail score: Pega Platform calculates Guardrail Scores in real time and excludes test Rulesets for accuracy. Lead System Architects (LSAs) configure which applications and Rulesets to include, tailoring quality assessments to business needs.
• Test coverage: Comprehensive test coverage metrics are available at user, application, and merged levels. Automated reporting supports manual and CI/CD-driven testing, which helps teams identify gaps and optimize coverage across the solution stack.
• Unit testing and scenario testing: Pega Platform supports configurable test run intervals and look-back durations, so that teams can align testing strategies with release cycles and business priorities. You can delay or accelerate scenario test cases based on project requirements. 
• Quality trend analysis: Quality metrics are tracked over configurable intervals, providing visibility into improvements or declines over time. LSAs can use trend data to inform strategic decisions and prioritize remediation efforts.

Pega Platform delivers robust Rule-coverage testing features to support comprehensive quality assurance across all application layers. 

Use the following features to validate Rule coverage across your application:

• Coverage and unit test Rules: Coverage and unit test calculations include activities, Case Types, collections, Data Pages, Data Transforms, decision tables, decision trees, declare expressions, flows, map values, report definitions, strategies, and When Rules.
• Coverage-only Rules: Coverage-only calculations include Correspondence, decision data, declare trigger, file listeners, Flow Action, harnesses, HTML fragments, HTML paragraphs, queue processors, scorecards, sections, Validations, XML streams, and other Rule types.
• Automated CI/CD integration: The system generates coverage reports as part of automated test runs, which support quality gating and compliance requirements. LSAs can access detailed charts and reports to assess application health and identify areas for improvement.

Pega Platform provides flexible settings to support diverse development and quality assurance strategies.

Use these settings to tailor quality controls and testing behavior to your team’s governance needs:

• Applications included: Select current and built-on applications for comprehensive quality analysis.
• Guardrail configuration: Exclude test Rulesets from guardrail calculations for more accurate scoring.
• Quality trend interval: Configure intervals from two weeks to six months to monitor quality trends.
• Test execution look-back duration: Set durations from one week to six months to capture relevant test history.
• Scenario test case execution: Enable or disable delays to optimize test run strategies.

For more information about changing application quality metrics settings, see Application quality metrics settings.

The Application Quality landing page provides essential metrics (including guardrails, test coverage, and unit testing) to help teams monitor application health and identify areas for improvement. Access the Application Quality landing page from the header in Dev Studio. 

The Test Coverage landing page provides reporting features that show how your application is tested:

• View interactive charts that visualize test coverage across the application.
• Generate user-level reports for individual test sessions.
• Create application-level reports that aggregate results from multiple users.
• Produce merged reports to analyze quality trends over time.

Coverage metrics are integrated into automated pipelines and dashboards, supporting continuous quality assurance and enabling the faster and safer delivery of new features.

The following use cases apply to Rule-coverage testing:

• Test artifact management: When development teams build or modify applications using sample or test layers on top of core systems, maintain test artifacts in the test application. Pega Platform enables teams to generate comprehensive coverage reports by executing test suites against both the current application and any built-on applications. This approach supports thorough validation of inherited logic, integrations, and customizations for robust and scalable solutions.
• Automated CI/CD quality gating: Pega Platform integrates Rule-coverage reporting directly into automated testing pipelines. The system generates coverage reports as part of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes to serve as a critical quality gate. This approach helps progress only thoroughly tested changes through deployment stages to reduce risk and accelerate delivery speed.

For more information, see Estimating test coverage. 

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